An arrest – and remand time – for being suspected of possessing extreme porn may act as wake-up call for those who thought that the new law on extreme porn would just quietly fade away.
Nathan Porter, of Jones Street, Pendleton, has been charged with seven counts of possession of extreme pornographic images and appeared for a …

Quite concerning...

It's the sort of thing people (ok, my uni housemates and me) used to leave on each others screens to take the piss. Rather worrying that it now carries a custodial sentence all by itself. It's also worrying that police computer forensics people who are busy enough are being diverted to work on "lightweight" cases such as this.

Murderers are free!

@AC 12:49

"In cases where it could be considered it animal cruelty yes it should be a crime."

What do you mean by "it"? (I mean the first "it" or the third "it". I'm going to tactfully ignore the second "it".) You sound like one of those depressingly numerous people who can't tell the difference between an activity and a picture of an activity.

A law against cruelty to animals - ACCEPTABLE

A law against possessing images of cruelty to animals - TOTALLY UNACCEPTABLE

@AC - it's called "consent"

I would imagine that the case against bestiality porn is that animals, like children, are considered unable to give consent, thus the DVDs feature depictions of real unconsensual sex.

Whether this makes sense or not is another matter, I would imagine you'd need to talk to a collection of biologists and animal psychologists to determine whether such material requires behaviour that is innately abusive towards either the performers or the animals involved. But this is the UK government, it shouldn't be any surprise by now that the decisions being made on any given subject within the law don't require those making decisions to have the faintest idea of what they're talking about...

bleh

An ex-colleague of mine from years ago was prosecuted for creating child porn. I'd known him for years and was horrified to discover someone I'd thought was OK had been doing that kind of thing.

He'd gone from a healthy interest in porn, to an unhealthy interest in porn (I spent some time deleting his collection from the HD of a communal PC - it's difficult to do that without seeing some of it), to child porn. And up until then, I'd have agreed with A/C #1, that looking at porn was your own business - I didn't like it, but it was nothing to do with me, etc. etc. ...

My knowledge of him makes me think that where porn's concerned, there can be a kind of escalation - you're happy with one sort, then one day that's not exciting enough, so you look for something racier, and so on... until you end up like this guy or my ex-colleague.

As for being prosecuted for owning it - why not? You're hardly going to own something you never use or look at, are you?

@AC 4th September 2009 13:04 GMT

I'm sorry - but that's absolute horsepoo.

Show me one (unbiased) recent statistic that shows women are traffiked into porn.

If you actually left the house once in a while and visited foreign lands, such as Paris, you'd find that beast porn is not just available, but oddly popular. These are professional, taxed and accredited DVDs of which all performers are consensual, not dirty back-alley jobs.

"Apart from many are traffiked women..."

i.e. there is no justification and you had to imagine an *extra* crime to try to justify it? I'm right aren't I?

If the 'crime' of possessing besty porn was justified then you wouldn't have to imagine some extra add on parts to justify it in your head!

1) Man arrested for buying Nike's

2) Why is this a crime when nobody is hurt?

3) ... apart from the small children beaten in the Nike factories as they appear in my imagination! What are you going to do about that, those kids are dying in my imagination, their blood stained tears, from their 22 hour days in the factory floor..... in my imagination.... is shocking!

More to it.

From the gist of the story it looks like the police have more serious matters to investigate and they are using this charge to get the guy out of the way while they complete the investigation. In a few weeks we'll probably find he's been charged with some really nasty crimes.

oddly

You could bang a goat and only get done for animal cruelty.

@@A/C 4th September 2009 12:49 GMT

that old chestnut, where prey tell is the evidence to support it other then wild scaremongering from anonymous cowards? Facts please facts, not the same kind of drivel the police and home office make up to get their fascism through.

Using this law to detain him

The police don't really care about this law - as noted in the article it's just tacked on to other convictions to ramp up the number of crimes solved.

The line "opposition to bail in this case was the latter: investigations are still ongoing for other serious matters." is the real issue here - they've used this law to detain him when they otherwise wouldn't have the proof to arrest him yet.

They may be justified in what they're doing, it may be for the public good, but I'm not sure it's right and proper and it certainly doesn't indicate they take the law any more seriously than they should.

Hehe

@ AC 12:49

Have you got anything to support this? Not that I'm sticking up (ahem) for this kind of stuff, but the spectre of 'trafficked women' keeps getting raised with nothing to back it up. (Or if there is something to back it up, it doesn't bear sensible scrutiny - see the 'Big Brothel' report, for example.)

Of course, if it's not harming trafficked women, then it's funding terrorists.

Re: bleh

Hoooo boy, that's my afternoon taken care of, then.

Could I just ask a) if you imagine this kind of escalation occurs with the majority of people who look at porn, and b) what possible harm owning or ooking at a picture of something does that necessitates the prosecution of the viewer?

Also, define 'unhealthy interest', if you would.

Any rational person should be able to see that this law is an immoral farce. Oh, and if the government actually cared about animal welfare they would sort out DEFRA, the Dangerous Dogs Act and any number of other badnesses which cause actual quantifiable suffering. It's wall-to-wall bullshit.

A disgrace

It doesn't surprise me that Plod are keen to start putting this law into practice (despite making noises about not being too fussed about it when it was first announced). As usual, they're just using yet another law designed to criminalise a whole new demographic to spruce up their PRP targets. These arrests are nothing more to them than a few more brownie points - without any thought for the otherwise law-abiding lives they behind, ruined.

Of course, by making the association of CP with 'extreme porn' Plod are also up to their old tricks of grooming the public consciousness to equate certain types of consensual adult sexual behaviour as not just 'peverse', but outright dangerous to kids. Nice going, Inspector Knacker!

How long before having an 'un-natural' foot fetish becomes symptomatic with an interest in prepubescents? Just leave it to the wonderful 'Boys in Blue' - they'll guarantee to stitch you up in ways you haven't even imagined possible.

@Bleh

I might have disagreed with you, but then I thought of my own experiences.

I saw something that excited me. It was new, it was different, it intrigued me and I enjoyed it.

But then I didn't want the same again, I wanted more, I wanted better, I wanted harder, I wanted more excitement!

So I...

... just went back to the library and got another book out.

(I would have put a FAIL icon on this, but that might have given it away)

How did you know that your colleague didn't have these interests before? How do you know it was a "progression"? How do you know it was "caused" by the porn?

You seem to be saying that, just like the idiots who proposed and passed this law, *everyone* cannot be trusted not to go out and commit murder or shag animals or abuse children just because they look at this stuff.

And if you want some evidence of how wrong you are, I suggest you look at the work of Professor Milton Diamond PhD of the University of Hawai'i who studied the effects of the availability of porn (including "extreme" porn) in the USA and Japan and concluded:

"It is certainly clear from the data reviewed, and the new data and analysis presented, that a massive increase in available pornography in Japan, the United States and elsewhere has been correlated with a dramatic decrease in sexual crimes"

RE: RE: bleh

Yep, laws used to exist to protect victims and provide a means for people that did bad things to be punished.

Pretty much every "bad thing" that can be done has a law that says you can't do it, there's nothing left to make laws for - all actions you can carry out are covered. What are the law makers and lobby organisations to do with themselves.

They could of course generate additional laws such as the recent ban on smacking where extensive (and sufficient) anti-child abuse law already exists, but why bother doing that when they can move into completely new territories where no legislation or laws exist.

There is a new trend happening not just in the UK but worldwide and trend is that intent = crime and even possible intent = crime.

What we are seeing is the emergence of (cliché or not) thought police. You can expect a whole raft of new thought crimes to be brought into existence mostly under the banner of anti-terrorism law.

The law has gone like this...

You carried out a terrorist act = Crime

You are going to carry out a terrorist act = Crime

You are thinking about carrying out a terrorist act = Crime - This is where we currently are.

And soon

Are you thinking of carrying out a terrorist act? = Crime

Maybe with terrorism it's not such a bad thing, but the logic will soon creep to all aspects of the law from paying your car tax to thinking about watching porn.

Criminals

The little shit who organised a gang of kids to burgle my house and five other houses in the area (whilst on probation for similar offences) only received 160 hours community service and had to pay me 100 quid compensation. He took a year to pay the 100 quid and I never received any of my stuff back.

How therefore, can anyone get a custodial sentence (even a suspended one) for looking at pictures, no matter how disgusting?

@Sarah Bee

@AC Friday 4th September 2009 13:04 GMT

If that is indeed the case then it's a more complex problem.

Should we then be considering possession of a picture of an act, not taken be you, and without knowledge of the circumstances in which the woman came into this... job, enough to make you complicit in the possible trafficking and abuse of the woman and cruelty to the animal?

The obvious comparison here is that of child pornography, where someone might try to make the same argument. The difference has to be though that child pornography only seems to be obtainable through secretive on-line* groups, who plan to carry out acts of abuse and share the resulting stash around their community. Bestiality on the other hand, I imagine can be found quite easily, from counties where it isn't illegal, or they don't enforce it.

*I think it's fair to say the web has a lot to answer for. Despite what Daily Hate readers say, I can't believe there are actually more of these sickos around than before. They just seem to be more coordinated now.

@AC 13:17

@AC 13:17

"My knowledge of him makes me think that where porn's concerned, there can be a kind of escalation - you're happy with one sort, then one day that's not exciting enough, so you look for something racier, and so on..."

So, if that happens with porn, presumably it would happen with sex, too, right? You start out perfectly happy with your wife... then it's having affairs, then it's the baby sitter; before you know it you're a pedophile!

By your logic, sex should be banned as a gateway to pedophilia. It doesn't make any sense there, and it doesn't make any sense with porn, either.

supply and demand

whilst the argument holds water on what individuals should and should not do in the privacy of their own home.

The issue is in the supply chain.

I'm sure that no-one can give me a reasoned argument that says it is right and proper to induce or even force children (or animals) into acts that have no basis in biology other than for self gratification or as is more often the case a purely financial operation aimed at vulnerable people.

<3 Sarah Bee

If the animals don't like it they'll kick and bite where it hurts >)

But seriously animal abuse (harm/cruelty) is one thing, jacking off a horse is another. Where the line is drawn should be up to the RSPCA or other private prosecutors. The police have better things to do and have enough toys (read; laws) to abuse.

@escalation boy; I've been looking at porn since before I was a teenager in one way or another, I'm now well beyond the age of consent (too many grey hairs (*sniffle*) and I've yet to get jiggy with dog, horse, goat or child. wtb a clue?

The secret to writing a good comment is quote facts and source!!! [citation needed] - it's one of the many good things wikipedia has done for us.

WOW

Sarah, THANK YOU. It is indeed wall to wall BS, I've just had a friend 'investigated' by the RSPCA for keeping her animals in conditions they like (no that's not how they phrased it). The same RSPCA currently being dragged over the tiles for various acts that are far worse than what she *didn't* do.

Laws like this are used by the British equivalent of the 'US Moral Majority' to force their narrow minded opinions on the rest of the population.

@ sarha be e

"Any rational person should be able to see that this law is an immoral farce. Oh, and if the government actually cared about animal welfare they would sort out DEFRA , the Dangerous Dogs Act and any number of other badnesses which cause actual quantifiable suffering. It's wall-to-wall bullshit."

I think you might be stretching the bounds of impartuialty there and if I may say so you sound tense my sugestion is you find an ipod and take it to the pub and see how well you can do the job from there :)

2. What gives anyone either the right or the insight to impugn another person's thoughts? It might be 'research' - you can't bloody tell and it doesn't bloody matter! Acts are different - if they are caught muffin the mule then (maybe) throw the book at them. Meanwhile our moral guardians can go wash their own brains out with soap!

Odd

I find it odd that for an IT website with such a professional readership, 'news' items like this and others involving porn or which have comic value have more comments than say the latest development in cloud computing or storage devices. Seems to me that people want a career in IT to allow them to bypass all the security and download porn all day - makes the day pass quicker I guess. Articles like this just show the readership which porn they now have to delete to stay just inside the law...

Social engineering hits the nail on the head

I blame the Daily Mail. And everybody else other than me. Time to start a political party for civil liberties? That, you know, actually understands technology? Though we'd never get elected, since the admission that there can be no absolute safety net against crime isn't sufficiently populist.

Also, I think they're really much better known as "either way" offences, since they usually go only one of either way (the rare exception being when Magistrates have heard the entire case but in so doing discover that their limited sentencing powers are insufficient and pass the case up to the Crown for sentencing).

Side note on trafficking

Trafficking is a crime on itself and trying to approach it indirectly by hunting porn viewers is stupid and counter-productive.

However I can tell you for sure that the trafficking issue is much bigger than you imagine. Some years ago, my wife worked in the Police in an eastern European country, in the department dealing with the fight against human trafficking.

From the victims who managed to escape they got glimpses of a huge underground world. Yes, it's hard to set numbers - it's not like they are running censuses, aren't they? But each escaping victim would tell how many others have left behind, or through how many locations they were moved.

My wife told me some of the stories they encountered and they were really horrific.

Why are so few victims escaping? There are many ways for their captors to hold them captive. For example, they threaten to torture and kill their families back home if they try to escape. Some of them develop very strong cases of the Stockholm syndrome. And even when they escape, they are stigmated for life and it's hard to reintegrate into the society. And later, like with any case of extreme abuse, many victims become traffickers themselves.

To make matter worse, traffickers often have corrupt cops in their back pockets, sometimes even working themselves at "recruiting" the girls. And it's not only the East-European cops who are corrupt. Brothels using trafficked women in Western Europe often operated with the help of the police as well - in many cases avid "consumers" themselves.

To those who think that this is not an important matter, I tell you this: just because you don't know much about the problem of human trafficking, it doesn't mean that the problem doesn't exist. Ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.

Modern-day slavery is still very much present in the Western world. And the sex industry is just one of the areas where you can find it.

@Crime = escalation of law comment

I couldn't agree more, but what I'd like to understand is why this is attitude so internationally prevalent? Is it the military-industrial complex or whatever it's called? Incidentally, I thought this was happening mainly in developed countries with western-style culture - am I wrong?

Traficking and porn

The more you push some activities underground, the more you will get criminal elements involved.

I'm prepared to believe some ladies prefer a pooch to a boyfriend - after all, rover doesn't want a beer afterward, and doesn't care if you watch Grey's anatomy instead of the game. And there are certainly mutts like a dog my neighbours once had that would shag anything from a table leg upwards. So no coercion there.

However, if the participants selling DVDs of their activities could do so without fear of prosecution, it would be easier to check who they were, and ensure that all concerned were indeed enthusiastic volunteers. (Society might also gain by collecting some taxes on the DVD sales).

By criminalizing the activity you force those indulging in it to become anonymous, and it therefore becomes harder to protect the vulnerable. In short, if traficked women are forced into these activities, it is partly because of, not despite extreme porn laws.

Re: A Side note on Trafficing

ahh see what you did there? when asked for credible statistics, rather then provide them, you provided a bunch of 3rd level hersay. "some random person on the internet posting anonymously (you), said his wife was told about" really isn't a solid retorical position.

As a matter of fact, you managed to write 8 paragraphs, without ONE verifiable fact. You might have a good future in politics!

seriously, if you want to help your case, you need to research it, and provide credible evidance to affirm your argument.

@ AC 14:24

@AC 15:23

Oi! I hope you can back up the assertion that the police (as an entity) assists human trafficking, infact being able to back up that any number of corrupt officers are involved would be a good start.

I'm about to start ripping into this affair, but the assertion that every, or even more than a few police officers are utter scumbags gets on my nerves. One of my mates once punched a man for raping his girlfriend, a probationer tried to arrest him(mate) while his GF was being examined, the sergeant promptly told said probationer to get stuffed. There you have an example of a bad,officious,prick of a cop, and an example of one with at least half a working brain.

Back to the case in hand. I don't like the idea of the contents of computers being used as an excuse to detain people who can't be charged on other grounds. Conceivably someone could even end up in custody until a court then decided that the image wasn't actually extreme porn after all.

To those who say that there's a difference between committing an act and having an image of it. Would you really get off on watching video of a gang-rape, knowing that someone's life was ruined to make that video, for your amusement? Think carefully.

Death of the Reg Icon because we haven't heard anything from Simon T for too long. There's nothing wrong with descriptions of violence towards lusers, they ain't human in the first place.

Stawman is always wrong.

@Sarah Bee and the others making some interesting arguments... leads me to this

Posession of a nuke shouldn't be a crime. Merely posessing it doesn't hurt anyone. Same thing for shooting towards you, as long as I don't actually wound you. " Attempted murder. Now, honestly, what is that? Do they give a Nobel Prize for attempted chemistry? "

Also, I like how " there can be a kind of escalation " has turned into "EVERYONE WHO EVER THINKS ABOUT ANYTHING BECOMES COMPLETELY OBSESSED WITH IT" You guys really need to escalate his/her comment to bash them over it.

"unhealthy interest" would probably be the point where they guy started obsessing over it to the point he started making child porn, but that's just my guess.

Also Sarah, you seem to be advocating that it's ok to posess child porn "b) what possible harm owning or ooking at a picture" is ok. Along your line of reasoning, what difference is selling that picture you posess? So now we're at selling child porn is ok. How far should we go down this kind of reasoning until you would be satisfied? I do believe there should be a line, and it should be well defined.